Some thoughts on anti-gunner worldview & making real progress

[AreWeFree]

So, no, I didn't read any peer-reviewed studies about what they're like. Should I have?

I don't want to sound too snarky here, so I should point out that I agree with your thought process in the rest of your post.

Good choice to fold against an opponent that is smarter and will crush you with real data.

[MosinVirus]

I am not smart enough to debate this, but I edited my post above some time ago.

With this:

And I think any attempt to "emotionally satisfy their concerns" is only going to dig the hole deeper. All we have been doing is emotionally satisfying someone's concerns. That is why a plain old semi auto rifle is an "assault weapon" now.

[fiddletown]

So, no, I didn't read any peer-reviewed studies about what they're like. Should I have?....

Unless you have solid evidence, such as properly conducted studies, to support your conjectures, there's no reason to accept them as true. And if we don't know that your conjectures are true, they are useless as a basis for building a counter strategy.

As Carl Sagan said, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

As Christopher Hitchens said, "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."

So I see no need to spend time considering a propose strategy for advancing the RKBA based on unvalidated assumptions.

[theLBC]

Keep in mind that the point is not to actually reduce murders, but to emotionally satisfy people's concerns. I welcome reasons why this wouldn't accomplish that, or other thoughts on how to satisfy the concerns, but don't get to caught up in practical impacts because they aren't all that relevant to emotional persuasion.

Also, please don't call them "libtards" in this thread (feel free elsewhere).

as i said, if it doesn't reduce murders, it won't reduce their concerns, because murders are their concern.
in order to satisfy their concerns we need to replace liberal policy makers that use poverty as a foundation for their support, but have no desire to reduce poverty and erode their own voters base.
eliminate poverty, public school failure factories and lack of meaningful employment and kids will not be forced to rely on black market drug dealing and its associated violence to get by.
we can't do that without removing democrats from power. everywhere, but especially large inner cities where much of this violence occurs.

as for the term you asked me not to use, please understand that i am not referring to liberals. i am referring to the people that have hijacked liberal ideology and replaced it with this abomination we are facing today.

[MosinVirus]

I don't mean to be rude, but the idea that you're going to solve the problem with high school shooter's ed is insane. You'd need the permission of the educational bureaucracy, and they won't find the idea as attractive as you do.

You should not, in general, be looking at ways to win which depend on the cooperation of people who are, on average, extremely hostile towards you. What are you going to do, fool them? High school teachers and educations bureaucrats aren't as dumb as you think.

If your solution is education, you have to deliver the education via channels other than the educational system. A good example of this in my opinion is Ian McCollum (sp?) packaging a set of WW1 weapons videos specifically for Battlefield 1 players. If you liked this video game, you can learn more about the real weapons you saw in this game, and all of a sudden you're using the word "clip" correctly and noticing how ignorant media coverage of gun stuff is.

Sorry, I came from a country with mandatory enlistment, and no RKBA. I got my firearm education in school.

What strikes me is that instead of really trying to solve problems, you seem to try to "sneak" around the issues, while giving more ground to opposition to "Satisfy their emotional concerns". After you are done satisfying them, and another shooting happens, prepare to satisfy more.

"Gun Free Zone" sign is a great example of satisfying someone's emotions.

I would say that those on the fence should be convinced with facts, perhaps those they have no exposure to currently.

The more I am reading your posts, the more I am disagreeing with your logic.
Sorry. Unsubscribing from thread. Good luck with your initiative. I sincerely hope you succeed. I am just too close-minded.

[glilon]

Bababoris nailed it!
-P

Yeah he did. I would add that they are not content to keep their views confined to CA., but want to spread it throughout the land. Reminds me of a metastatic cancer.

[divert_fuse]

Unless you have solid evidence, such as properly conducted studies, to support your conjectures, there's no reason to accept them as true.

I agree that actual studies would be better, but it's not totally clear to me why you don't think my experience counts as evidence. I mean, if you told me "I hear you saying they think this way, but studies show they don't" I'd concede your point. But I assume you don't.

I've never run an opinion survey in my life and I'm probably not going to start now. Are you going to run the opinion surveys? If you aren't, how do you propose to get them done?

What I don't like about what you're saying is that it sounds suspiciously like reasons to sit around doing nothing while the other side wins all the marbles. As George Patton said, "A good plan, violently executed, today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow."

So, if there's some reason why some of my psychological claims seem doubtful to you, why some of my experiences of what's persuasive and what isn't don't seem representative to you, I'd like to hear it. But just saying it's not peer-reviewed science so no need to think is foolish. Your enemies would love for you to wait around for peer review before you start trying to oppose them.

[divert_fuse]

as for the term you asked me not to use, please understand that i am not referring to liberals. i am referring to the people that have hijacked liberal ideology and replaced it with this abomination we are facing today.

I get it, I just meant it runs counter to the lets-think-dispassionately-about-how-to-win atmosphere I'm trying to create here. Congratulating one another on hating the outgroup doesn't get us what we want.

we can't do that without removing democrats from power. everywhere, but especially large inner cities where much of this violence occurs.

By all means, but I'm talking about stuff we can do short term. Political realignment in California isn't going to happen any time soon, and I'd like my gun rights before then.

[divert_fuse]

And I think any attempt to "emotionally satisfy their concerns" is only going to dig the hole deeper. All we have been doing is emotionally satisfying someone's concerns. That is why a plain old semi auto rifle is an "assault weapon" now.

Emotionally satisfying someone's concerns is NOT the same as caving in to their demands. It's about making them comfortable with YOUR demands so they don't oppose you.

[fiddletown]

I agree that actual studies would be better, but it's not totally clear to me why you don't think my experience counts as evidence. ...

Phooey! Why should I, or anyone else, trust your experience? We have no way of guessing how broad or representative that experience is. We have no way to assess how your prejudices of preconceived notions might color your understanding of your experiences.

...I mean, if you told me "I hear you saying they think this way, but studies show they don't" I'd concede your point. But I assume you don't....

Ah, the Burden of Proof Fallacy. Sorry, but it's your claim so it's your burden to support it with evidence.

...I've never run an opinion survey in my life and I'm probably not going to start now. Are you going to run the opinion surveys? If you aren't, how do you propose to get them done?...

That's another matter entirely. But the reality is that if we don't know, we really don't know; and if we don't have good evidence data/evidence we can't know.

...What I don't like about what you're saying is that it sounds suspiciously like reasons to sit around doing nothing while the other side wins all the marbles. As George Patton said, "A good plan, violently executed, today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow."....

1. What makes you think your's is even a "good plan"? I'm sure not convinced, and without evidence you're not going to be convincing.
   
   
2. The last "good plan violently executed" I recall around here was a bunch of folks demonstrating carry openly carrying unloaded guns. That result in a law prohibiting the open carrying of unloaded guns.

...So, if there's some reason why some of my psychological claims seem doubtful to you, why some of my experiences of what's persuasive and what isn't don't seem representative to you, I'd like to hear it....

The Burden of Proof Fallacy again.

...But just saying it's not peer-reviewed science so no need to think is foolish. Your enemies would love for you to wait around for peer review before you start trying to oppose them.

It appears that you are unfamiliar with customary practices in rigorous, academic disciples. Papers submitted for publication in respected journals are first subject to peer review, i. e., the scrutiny of others who are experts in the same field for the purposes of assuring that the author's methodology was sound and to filter out invalid or poor quality work.

[theLBC]

I get it, I just meant it runs counter to the lets-think-dispassionately-about-how-to-win atmosphere I'm trying to create here. Congratulating one another on hating the outgroup doesn't get us what we want.



By all means, but I'm talking about stuff we can do short term. Political realignment in California isn't going to happen any time soon, and I'd like my gun rights before then.

what we can do (as you suggested) is take every opportunity to introduce somebody new into shooting. while this may not immediately impact violence, or convince anti-gun types to reconsider, it might take somebody off the fence on this issue and onto our side.

[divert_fuse]

It appears that you are unfamiliar with customary practices in rigorous, academic disciples.

I actually am familiar, but that's aside the point. Political combat is not a rigorous academic discipline.

The last "good plan violently executed" I recall around here was a bunch of folks demonstrating carry openly carrying unloaded guns.

I was really hoping to do better than that.

The Burden of Proof Fallacy again.

Dude, I don't get it. Do you like winning arguments on the internet more than having gun rights or something?

Okay, that was just frustration talking. But I really get the feeling you're treating this too combatively. I'm trying to brainstorm here. If whatever you're doing is somehow ultimately aimed at getting us more gun rights, great, but you might want to make that more explicit in the future, because it's easy to get into worthless fight spirals on internet forums.

[fiddletown]

....Dude, I don't get it. Do you like winning arguments on the internet more than having gun rights or something?

Phooey! You've stated a false dichotomy.

I can support gun rights and still reject the drivel you're trying to feed us here.

Your approach seems to be based on your beliefs about how people opposed to the private ownership of firearms think. But you've given us no reason to think that what you believe to be true is true. So I don't see what you have to offer.

The Internet has become a midden of unsupported opinion and unvalidated assumption -- fake news, fake information, and fake knowledge. And people who apparently don't know any better take that stuff and run with it -- hitting walls, getting nowhere, or screwing things up.

[big red]

I have nothing to say other than i just read this thread and with what i read I see no hope of regaining gun rights in california in my lifetime and that should be a while. you are doing the leftist socialist's anti-gun side's work for them and negating each other with personal attacks, demanding evidence to back up statements without offering any, and i have seen more intelligent arguing on a primary school ground. you have insured the worst is still to come with your collective attitudes.

[divert_fuse]

Your approach seems to be based on your beliefs about how people opposed to the private ownership of firearms think. But you've given us no reason to think that what you believe to be true is true.

I was (I thought) pretty explicit that these were my personal judgments on the basis of my personal experience. I don't want to get into some kind of epistemological derail here, but while I understand that's not exactly the platonic form of reliable evidence, it's not nothing either.

The reality is, we have to work with the resources we have, not the ones we feel we ought to have according to some abstract theory. These resources include intelligence on the disposition of the enemy, so to speak. You have to strike a balance between learning everything you'd like to know and exploiting what you currently know in a timely fashion.